Today’s the first of 2020, the final year of the 21st century’s second decade. Meaningless numbers, or the first year of its third decade, depending on who you talk to. And if you’re aware of other cultures and calendars, you have to realize January 1, 2020, means nothing to the universe.

But we’re here, and among other social agreements, we swim within the context of a framed calendar grid. The months aren’t as even as we might like, thanks in part to our wobbly-ass planet rolling unevenly through space, and the last four months are misnamed due to an ungainly, politically driven shift in the calendar, so really we’re left with a big goopy, stringy mess of dates and metrics. And like with technology and economic structures, better ideas have been proposed and rejected out of hand.

What’s this mean for you, the erotic Size artist? You can let yourself off the hook because nobody knows what they’re doing. It’s what I call “proactive nihilism”: if nothing means anything, you can go ahead and enjoy yourself in your creative exploits without repercussion. I don’t mean you can break the law and violate others’ rights to life and liberty; what I mean is you can draw a crappy picture or write a crappy story and no one will care. And if someone does care? And tries to hold it against you? Just kick back and relax and they’ll be dead in a few decades.

Hooray!

That is how I will try to look at my framework for 2020: more doing stuff for fun and self-interest, less doing stuff because of market demands or perceived expectations. Nothing wrong with having goals, like I’d like to beef up my Smashwords library with at least two or three more titles. I’d like to outline two novels, either of which could be marketable (if a bit weird) to mainstream publishing. I’d like to read more, both conventional literature and a deep dive into the Size community’s valiant writers; to that end, I’d like to learn greater tolerance and self-protection, when coming up against relentlessly careless grammatical style or deeply challenging topics.

Beyond those goals, I want to return to playful, enthusiastic writing I enjoy. When I started writing my first Size erotica 25 years ago, I could type over 90 wpm at under 10% errors, and that still wasn’t fast enough to get all the ideas out of my head. I had to see my vision on the page, I craved to make my libertine imaginings a little more real, causing them to exist outside of my head. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone because, among reasons, I had the barest concept of the breadth of the Size community, back in the day. It was a nebulous realm of grainy bitmaps and Grand Old Writers warily approaching the online networks to share the stuff they’d created and collected for decades previous. I tuned in to that, and to this day I have a three-ring binder full of classic stories from Usenet and long-extinct homepages. Sometimes, when I review them, I can still taste the nougat core of “I’m not alone in this after all” and the caramel layer of this glorious, inexplicable fetish, lovingly enrobed in the dark chocolate of printing them out in the office, after hours, at the risk of my employment.

I wonder what happened to that thrill of creation. Several possible explanations come to mind. Maybe GTS was a button I’ve been hitting way too often for two decades. Maybe tastes change with time and it’s served its purpose. Maybe challenging myself to a story a day for three months and trying to give equal time on Patreon to neighboring fetishes I don’t necessarily share burned me out. Maybe it was the defeat of accepting that there is no giantess waiting for me to prove myself—that no matter the diversity of creative ventures I undertake, how well I do at them, or how I support and encourage others, the giantess is, yes, the friends I made along the way.

No, I didn’t really think there was a gigantic, physically impossible woman hanging around somewhere. The real answer is more complicated than that. Size Twitter seemed like an exciting new channel, after the others had disappeared or soured, with the seed of possibility, and events have borne out otherwise. The colossal friends I’ve made should feel no slight at this, they’re marvelous and I’m grateful to know them. Everyone should be relieved that I did not find what I was looking for, perhaps.

Hooray!

I shouldn’t be creating in anticipation of some prurient reward. I used to create solely because the prize was having my creation in front of me. There was no style guide, there was no editor or audience. It was just me and my horniness and my typing speed. A lot of good stuff came out of that, a lot of crap, too, but it was all done because the act itself was exciting and compelling. I wish I could find the very first story I wrote, a plotless sexcapade starring the platinum-haired, ruby-lipped girlfriend of a local hesher. I’d like to see how badly it needs shaping up, editorially, but I really want to revisit the passion of that first creation, the raw, greedy, amoral storytelling of an impossible lust. I don’t think I published it anywhere, I can only hope it exists in my box of old hard drives. A good goal for 2020 would be to hit up one of my computer tech friends and plunder those drives, if they’re still functional, and sift through the detritus for small, rare gems.

The most important thing, however, is getting back to loving writing. I’m going to work on inspiration and inviting the Muse. I’m going to more heavily filter what appears on my Size Twitter timeline, because a lot of it makes me feel like my style’s outmoded and vanilla and I have no place in the community. People insist I do, I’m guessing just because I’ve been doing this longer than some of them have been alive, but I know everyone and everything has their day in the sun, and then the sun sets, the world turns, things move on. But I don’t need to have this hammered over my head on Twitter. The entertainment we consume shouldn’t compromise and defeat the organism. The Size umbrella is vast, and some of the silos beneath it are unrelated and incompatible. I don’t have to endorse stuff that depresses, upsets, or repulses me, and I don’t have to see it. I won’t shame anyone else over it but I don’t have to expose myself to it.

So I’ll treat the new year as a refocus on inspiration, nourishment, self-care, and just fucking playfulness with creativity. I say that now, and I’ll hold myself to that. Anyone who’s read this far should feel free to prod me, at any point in the year, and ask how truly I’m holding to this. That would be nice.

Best to everyone in the new year. If you’re stupid and hateful, I’m sorry that life has shown you this is how you’re supposed to be; I hope things turn around and you get the things your heart and soul need to be genuinely happy. If you’re weighted down and struggling in an endless fight, I hope to Goddess you get a break, find some tools and some allies, and a reason to continue pulls you out of this mess. Because it does get better, but sometimes we get the curiosity or patience for that beaten out of us. That’s how it shakes out in an indifferent universe, I’m sorry.

My intention for the Size community creators is that you immediately, completely, and permanently reside with your Muse, savor the challenge of endless personal growth, and love everything you do. I seek this for myself and I support it in you. Best of luck to all of us, and take care.

Hooray!